… was Flatbush born, was twenty-six,
had lavender eyes and frizzly hair.
A Dutchman got her in a fix
at Carcassonne. A pockmarked Swede
took her to Budapest by air.
And she was bored, Roxane, Roxane
was talented and incomplete.
I knew her when an Englishman
was keeping her in two dull rooms
on a dead-end street.
I knew her too when sick with love
or lovelessness or womankind
she closed her lavender eyes and dove
into the river bright with gulls
and garbage, oil and grapefruit rind,
thought better of it, swam to shore.
I too have plunged into that sea
of filth, and thought that nevermore
should I swim landward, yet I died,
and lived, no more than she.
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